Watch The Super Bowl Ad Newcastle and Anna Kendrick Would Have Made

How do brands that can’t afford a $4 million Super Bowl commercial capitalize on the big game? British beer company Newcastle Brown Ale devised a campaign around just that: the ad they would’ve made if they could’ve afforded it.

Appropriately called “If We Made It,” the campaign consists of a series of videos that poke fun at the company’s small budget. It officially launched last week, but the first video to draw serious attention is a behind-the-scenes spoof featuring “Pitch Perfect” star Anna Kendrick who rants about being asked to star in the commercial only to have the brand pull out when they realized they didn’t have enough money.

“It’s disappointing, you know, because I was really looking forward to the paycheck,” she deadpans, before telling the cameraman to “suck it.” The video culminates with Kendrick furiously storming out of view as a hand reaches in and places a case of Newcastle in her spot.

The video was posted on Tuesday and has been viewed 2.5 million times on YouTube. Newcastle estimates that including Facebook views and visits to IfWeMadeIt.com, where all of the videos live, the campaign has drawn more about 5.5 million views thus far.

The spot featuring Kendrick has been popular with males ages 24-34, which is directly in line with the company’s target audience, said Quinn Kilbury, Newcastle’s brand director.

“We’re not dripping with money so we had to make sure we made a really smart choice in terms of which actress we chose,” he said. “We wanted someone who was a real person and hadn’t done a ton of brand endorsements in the past. We settled on Anna and she just ran with it. A lot of what you see in that spot was her idea.”

The commercial is consistent with Newcastle’s larger “No Bollocks” campaign, which takes a humorously direct approach to speaking to consumers and is helmed by New York city agency Droga5.

The company has plans for unveiling more spots in the coming days. There are also social media and online-based advertising plans for Sunday.

“It’s silly stuff,” Kilbury said. “But for us, so is spending $4 million on a commercial.”

The company this morning posted a video showing the storyboard images to the ad that they would have made. Watch it the clip.